The Ministry of Finance has prepared a package of amendments to the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code, RBC reports. According to the amendments, the owners of digital currencies can be imprisoned for up to three years if they have not reported to the tax authorities crypto transactions amounting 45 million rubles (equivalent to $585 thousand) or above to the tax authorities at least twice in three years.

The Ministry has also developed amendments to the Tax Code, anti-money laundering legislation and the Code of Administrative Offenses in terms of regulating digital currencies and digital financial assets.

The Ministry proposes to oblige the owners of cryptoassets (individuals and organizations) to report the receipt of digital currency, crypto transactions and crypto balances in the crypto wallet, if the amount of digital currency transactions exceeds an amount equivalent to 600 thousand rubles ($7.8 thousand) in monetary terms in a calendar year, according to the new version of the bill (in the previous version - 100 thousand rubles or $36.5 thousand).

Digital currency exchanges and miners will have to send information on crypto transactions to the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation (Rosfinmonitoring). For failure to provide information to the tax authority on time, a fine of $650 will be imposed.

Moreover, the authorities want to establish fines for operations with cryptocurrencies: for illegal circulation - from $650  to $1.3 thousand for citizens, from $1300 to $13 thousand for officials, from $2 thousand to $26 thousand for legal entities; for using cryptocurrency as a means of payment for goods or services - from $260 to $2.6 thousand for citizens, from $650 to $5.2 thousand for officials, from $1.3 thousand to $13 thousand for legal entities.

According to the Ministry, the bills are necessary to implement the norms enshrined in the law on digital financial assets and digital currency adopted in summer 2020.

Original (in Russian)